Re: 'About' versus 'About...'

["Bruce Dodson" <bruce_dodson bigfoot com>]

When I see the '...' in an unfamiliar menu option (one I've never pressed or
seen documentation for), it immediately means
two things to me: 1) I should pay attention to what comes up next, because
there's more to do, and 2) relax, because if this isn't what I want there'll
be the opportunity to cancel out later.  Sometimes #2 turns out to be
incorrect but in the good applications (and in all compliant gnome apps)
there will always be a way to cancel.

Whether About deserves '...' is a judgement call if the About box is modal,
because you do have to interact with it before you can continue.  However,
in compliant gnome apps, a modeless about box will be more typical, and in
that case I'd say there is no case for adding those dots.

By the way, out of curiosity I popped open MS Word on my Windows 95
partition to see what it does.  Verdict: the About box there has no
ellipses.  However, but when I looked around a bit more I realized that is a
poor example program: File/Properties doesn't have ellipses either, although
Tools/Options does.  And Help/Microsoft Word Help does not have the dots,
while Help/Wordperfect Help (in Word) does.  That Help example is
interesting, because "Microsoft Word Help" brings up a dialog saying "What
do you want to do?", whereas "Wordperfect Help" brings you straight to
information without prompting for anything.

Hmm.  Let's not use MS products as examples any more.

Bruce